Good cinematography, weak plot...

Rating: 6/10 (14 June 2005)

Although this movie is an interesting diversion for an hour or two, and a fairly good zombie flick, it's not a great movie.
The movie starts out like any normal zombie movie, with the main character waking up in a completely abandoned city (think of how the first "Resident Evil" movie ends), meeting up with a small band of uninfected humans, and seeking shelter elsewhere. All this is well and good, though a bit slow -- London is completely empty, and the film demonstrates that abundantly through breathtaking wide-angle shots.
Up until the point where the soldiers attempt to rape the female lead character and the young girl, everything was believable, though it left a few "realistic" concerns unaddressed (I'll address those later). Everything from that point on is just a bloodlust-filled rampage shot with grainy film (to good visual effect, but not terribly good in terms of plot), ending with a "Sound of Music"-type perfect ending where a Finnish fighter jet notices the small group and signals for their rescue.
Given that zombie movies are usually pretty cheesy, 28 Days Later was, for the most part, an enjoyable if somewhat bland movie. The last 30 minutes or so really ruined it, in my eyes, however.
Being an individual who prepares for various emergencies (I live near a major earthquake fault in California, though I admit to being less-than-prepared for a full-out zombie invasion) and former US Army soldier, I had the following observations:
1) With practically all of England infected, there is no facility for manufacturing ammunition, and certainly no importation of such. Why the British soldiers are so indiscriminate about full-auto fire when they believe the rest of the world is infected (and thus no hope of rescue) is beyond me. Shouldn't they be conserving their ammunition to make it last as long as possible?
2) Why did it take 56 days for observation planes to arrive and start looking for survivors? While it's unlikely that other countries would immediately start sending in ground troops (for fear of infection), there's no reason why they shouldn't send observation planes to look at what's happening.
3) Along the lines of #1, why did the British soldiers use their generator so much? They had a wood-burning boiler (where'd the water come from?), which made sense as they were in a wooded area and had plenty of fuel, but no resupply of gasoline or diesel. Even major internet data centers have only enough fuel for a week or two, certainly not 28 continuous nights, particularly so when they're hiding out in a captured mansion that doesn't have the existing infrastructure.
4) It seems clear that zombies cannot climb sheer walls. Since the male lead character Jim had to scale a wall to flee the crazed soldiers, wouldn't it be fairly trivial to ensure that any breaches in the perimeter wall (gates, for example) were secured, and then clear all areas within the wall of zombies, thus being able to live in some degree of security? Additional reinforcement of the walls (perhaps with downward-pointing spikes, water-filled moats, or other barriers) could come later. Simply counting on all the zombies to come from one direction, crossing a minefield, and into your existing fields of fire (who's on duty all the time? There's not enough soldiers to stay awake 24 hours a day.) is rather silly from a tactical perspective.
All right, enough nitpicking. As far as zombie movies go, this one's all right...but zombie movies aren't generally that great in the first place. Great visuals, good first 2/3rds of the film, terrible ending, and overall weak-to-moderate plot.